Star Wars_ The Black Fleet Crisis 03_ Tyrant's Test - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [108]
Tragett, a veteran and a pragmatist, understood the issues driving the decision. “Affirmative, Penga Rift. But if that’s the plan, I’d like to rotate Tuomis out, bring someone else down. He’s been fighting shelter fever, and he’s a little shaken right now.”
“Site setup is half outside work,” Eckels said. “Might turn him around, just being able to see that horizon. And hard work is a lot better for the disposition than lying there all night listening to the wind howl. Let’s wait twenty and review the options when we see how he is in the morning.”
With the Team Alpha crisis past, Penga Rift returned to its normal orbital pattern, and Eckels contacted the other teams in turn for their daily updates. Team Beta was conducting a deep-water survey from a camp on a massive slab iceberg; Team Gamma was working the ridges above Stopa-Krenn Glacier in search of postcatastrophe Qella habitations and nomadic artifacts.
“You have one more day to wrap things up there,” Eckels informed the Beta team leader. “Then I’m moving you to S-Eleven. With Alpha being driven out of N-Three, we still haven’t gotten into a city site—which is why I’m making that our top priority for the time remaining.”
“Understood, Dr. Eckels. No objection here—we’re clearly into diminishing returns.”
Eckels’s news for Gamma, delivered half an orbit later, had a similar flavor. “You have a hundred hours to find a no-fooling, hip-deep-in-midden habitation before I pull you off and split you up so we can go double-shifts at S-Nine and S-Eleven. We have all the skin flakes, callus scrapings, scat sheddings, and ice-burned limbs the Institute can use. We’re not leaving here without at least a peek at how they lived—before if not after, and both if at all possible.”
“Acknowledged,” said the Gamma leader. “Let me talk to Tia about yesterday’s side scans. There’s a spot I want her to get a second look at.”
“Transferring you now.”
Eckels studied the schedule on his datapad’s display a moment longer, then stored it. He knew that he was pushing the team hard, both those on the surface and the analysts and catalogers in the lab. But he saw no real alternative. They had custody of Penga Rift for twenty-nine more days—after which Dr. Bromial’s Kogan 6 expedition, already postponed two months, would take over. That broke down to thirteen productive days at Maltha Obex and sixteen wasted days in transit back to Coruscant.
All that time just to drag our hands and brains from one side of the galaxy to another—the universe is an offense to any reasonable concept of order.
Eckels found himself envying his client for having a ship like Meridian at his disposal. The black-hulled sprint that had made the pickup had completed a round trip to Coruscant in less than the time it would take the elderly research vessel to complete one leg. But the Obroan Institute would never invest its precious resources in something as ephemeral as speed.
“Archaeology is not a race,” Director bel-dar-Nolek would say. “It is a profession for the patient. We, who think in centuries and millennia, can hardly notice a handful of days.”
But bel-dar-Nolek no longer did fieldwork. The longest trip he regularly made was a twenty-minute walk from his home to his office at the Institute.
Leaving the comm booth, Eckels started aft toward the labs. But before he reached them, he found himself paged over the shipcomm.
“Captain Barjas, to the bridge, please. Dr. Eckels, to the bridge, please.”
Eckels recognized the voice of the first officer, who had been with the ship for nine years and uncounted expeditions. Eckels also recognized the note of urgency that made Manazar’s words more than a polite request. Turning, Eckels reversed his steps, adding a jot of haste to them until he passed into the crew section